WITHIN A THOUSAND FEET OF THE TOP
height seemed to assert themselves quite suddenly. From
going 300 feet or so of vertical height in an hour, we sud-
denly found ourselves cut down to little more than 100.
From taking three or four breaths to a step we were reduced
to having to take ten or more. Even then we had to stop
at frequent intervals to get our breath. As Norton said
in the account he wrote afterwards: " Every five or ten
minutes we had to sit down for a minute or two, and
we must have looked a sorry couple." The imaginative
reader must not picture to himself a couple of stalwarts
breasting the tape, but a couple of crocks slowly and
breathlessly struggling up, with frequent rests and a lot
of puffing and blowing and coughing. Most of the coughing,
and probably most of the delay, came from me ; Norton
was, as ever, infinitely patient, and never so much as
suggested that I was keeping him back. Finally, as we
approached the level of 28,000 feet, the summit being only
half a mile away or less, I felt that, as far as I was con-
cerned, it was hopeless to continue. I told Norton that
he had no chance of the summit with me. My throat
was not only extremely painful, but was getting almost
blocked up—why, I knew not. So, finding a suitable
ledge on which to sit in the sun and pull myself together,
I told Norton to go on. If the remainder of the mountain
were as easy in general angle as what we had already done,
there was no particular danger in climbing it alone; we
two had not yet used the rope at all.
So, at 28,000 feet, I sat down and watched Norton go
on. But he, too, was not far from the limit of his endur-
ance, and after proceeding for some distance horizontally,
but not a hundred feet in vertical height above me, he
stopped in the big couloir, looked at the rocks around its
top (which are rather steeper than we had thought) and
turned back. Soon he was shouting to me to come on
and bring a rope, as he was beginning to be snow-blind
and could not see where to put his feet. So I went on and
joined him, not forgetting to put a specimen of the rock
129 5